Professional and contract painters are typically hired in commercial settings where an entire house, building or other structure must be painted within a predetermined period of time. In these circumstances, it has become common for such painters to employ airless spray painting to accomplish the task. This form of painting utilizes a high-pressure pump that pushes paint through a spray nozzle into a misting shower. Unlike spray guns that are used in conventional automobile and furniture painting, no air is mixed with the paint.
While airless spray painting provides an extremely swift means for coating the surfaces of large structures, it has at least one major drawback. In particular, it is difficult to create or frame a straight line around trim, windows, doors, edges and other adornments due to “over spray” which occurs after paint exits the nozzle of a spray gun. The use of masking tape and plastic or paper sheeting to form a protective film and straighter lines is somewhat effective, but it is also labor intensive. Furthermore, when masking tape is not removed properly, it leaves a residue that is quite sticky and difficult to clean.
To avoid the problems associated with masking tape and to protect a non-designated surface or wall from the misapplication of paint while using a high pressure spray gun, painters have improvised by using spray shields formed with a strip of cardboard, aluminum or other suitable material. However, these are difficult to hold and impossible to extend several feet when painting with a spray gun.
One commercial example of a paint shield is manufactured by Warner Manufacturing Co. of Minneapolis, Minn., as #305 Pro. The device consists of a plastic shield segment or plate which is fixedly secured with a series of fastening screws to a handle. If a user desires to shift the plate so that it fastens to the extension handle at a different location along the length of the plate, the user must remove the fastening screws, reposition the handle or plate relative to one another, and then refasten the plate to the extension handle. Although the Warner paint shield is thus capable of some degree of longitudinal adjustment, it is not capable of any angular or pivotal adjustment, nor is the Warner paint shield capable of being extended without completely separating the handle from the shield plate and then re-attaching the shield plate to a longer handle. Due to these limitations, the device is not particularly versatile when surfaces at different heights and/or varying surface areas and contours need to be painted or otherwise coated.
Another paint shield is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,962,722 and manufactured by Hyde Manufacturing Co. as the Hyde Tools PROSHIELD™ spray shield. The device includes a plastic plate or blade which is secured to a blade holder. Two hinged components, which permit angular adjustment of the blade, are secured to one another with a selectively releasable hinge fastener. While the device provides for some pivotal adjustment, pivoting while the paint shield is held at an elevated height during use cannot effectively be accomplished. When a user needs the blade to rest at a particular angle, the user must first physically bring down the device down from an elevated height, then loosen the nut or other fastener which is likely covered in wet paint, then reposition the protection blade to the desired angle, and then raise the blade back to a desired height and location. This results in inefficient operation and waste of valuable time, as well as a dirty pair of hands.
Another deficiency in the prior art is that it does not provide for effective storing of the blade, extension handle and/or other parts of the paint shield when a job is finished and the device is no longer in use. When a job is finished, the paint shield must be separated into various constituent parts to make it more compact and easy to travel with. However, by separating the shield from the device, there exists the strong possibility that eventually either the shield portion or other part(s) of the device will be lost, or misplaced or left at a job site.
Thus, despite efforts to provide an effective paint shield for protecting a surface from the misapplication of paint and other coating materials, the prior art paint suffers from a number of deficiencies.